Ask Lemmygrad

While studying (sociology and politics) my lecturer told me a time they where commisioned to do an investigation into heroin users in Glasgow and come back with reccomondations for policy.

They go and interview 100's of people, conduct experiments, come back and tell them

'we should legalize drugs and setup safe consumption rooms in order to reduce harm as much as possible' (Glasgow has some of the highest rates of drug deaths in the world for context)

They tell her 'we dont like your results, we wont be pursuing any of your reccomondations unless you can make it say that we need to criminalize them'

Anyway, academia is mostly just a way for a company to advertise itself now a days. It works by only things that make profit and make company/politician look good will be funded; Academia is mostly compromised in the upper echeleons of it, with many well do-ers and intulectual energy being wasted.

The role of academia under any regime of political economy is complex because there will always be incentives to defend the system in place while the standard of seriousness can't just make it easy propaganda for the ruling class.

The easiest position for an academic to have is to criticise without opposing: being critical is a way to reinforce something (hence why communists encourage self-crit), only by actively opposing something you can destroy it.

I'm a horticulturist. My university is completely coopted by the largest agribusinesses in the region. Our buildings, our grants, the consulting that underpaid staff do on the side- it's all tied in some way to major corporations and the admins setting the curriculum are all directly paid by them. As a result, none of the natural science courses have any kind of radicalism or actual environmentalism to them. They heavily push neoliberal solutions to systemic problems that they refuse to identify as such. The research is guided by corporate interests and whims, and if it identified them as the people directly destroying the land here then I have no doubts it'd be suppressed and the researchers responsible purged. The product of that research is therefore how best to abuse a cow and how to get the most wheat out of a plot of land in the shortest amount of time.

In as few words as possible: U.S. academia functions as an MLM* scheme where your best career prospect after getting out will be in academia, preparing further students to leave academia only to return, ad infinitum.

Except for STEM degrees. Then you might be able to get a job for the military industrial complex.

Almost no one I know who finished university wound up doing the kind of work they studied for. One's in healthcare. The rest are still doing odd-jobs or wound up back in academia.

*MLM = multi-level marketing, not Marxist-Leninist-Maoist

Its another tool used to reinforce/perpetuate the system that it resides within.

You'll find classes that might be able to fly under the radar and professors/instructors that can get away with injecting some more radical anti establishment ideas into a class but for the most part... its just another means of reproduction.

hellscape

Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris covers the creation and life of Stanford University and its role in Colonialism (and its Colonial roots). It's a hella long read but great at showing you that Academia is a pivotal arm upholding Colonialism and the Bourgeoisie.

I am the benefactor of this system, I grew up poor, child of an immigrant (and one US American), I busted my ass studying (mostly because I am a bookworm by nature, I can read 8 or 10 hours in a row by accident) and even though I went to a community college at first, I was given a space to transfer and ended up in the Ivy League. They are all progressive on the outside but reinforce your “superiority” and so many people actually believe they are superior beings (even though most pay their way in and can afford pricey tutors for all their classes). My professors were mostly all amazing and brilliant. I have a degree of economic privilege that I feel is awarded to me due to the connections from the system.

I still believe that the entire system is bullshit and needs to be torn down. Education frees the mind and the soul, but to gatekeep this education is to stay within the elites and a few choice poors elevated as the “hyper-competent managerial class” is still a shitty system. I was awarded a fancy trinket for my academic excellence and I sold it to some rich kid that wanted it and donated that money to give to South American charities.

It disappoints me to no end. My institution is not prestigious, when I attend seminars or lectures (typically only advertised for graduate students or faculty) the fawning over speakers from prestigious institutions I find a bit abhorrent.

The questions asked by the audience are self-satisfying 'low-balls' more for hoping to please the speaker & be seen than genuine intellectual curiosity.

As well, I understood I was mistaken when I thought academics were cool for being reserved in their statements.

I still appreciate it, and even asking my own professors questions in smaller-sized classes, which are considered challenging are then skirted without engaging in any way.

This as well as other interactions led me to understand much of 'reservedness' in answering question by academics has reputation in mind. Speaking from an adjacent field or attempting some synthesis in dialogue where the academic has less authority is met with resistance.

As well, there seems to be no praxis of any kind. Not praxis as in protesting and organizing, simply making acknowledgements of historical events in the pursuit of academic integrity is discarded.

Then, the kind of knowledge obtained and developed by academics is genuine, there is useful stuff there and it is toothless. It makes no considerations to the world outside, rather the ivory tower is front and centre.

I think, "how can they ignore entire regions of the world or centuries of history?" In the case of natural sciences, incl. statistics. I keep thinking, if the context was given, which I have reason to believe some professors know, it would amend the confusion amongst my peers.

tl;dr mao seems to be correct with his ideas about intelligentsia

There was a time when academia was heavily socialist until the early 70s or so in the West. It's the one institution that needs to be brought back to our side before a revolution can succeed. Feudal, liberal, and fascist governments were afraid of universities until recent times when it got defanged.

While these institutions can be progressive and may seem to foster that "unlimited freeze peach", they also function as businesses who want to attract as many intellectuals as possible with the hope of boosting their reputation.

As a whole, they form the intellegentsia that shape and steer our culture. I wouldn't say they're the sole dominating force of the cultural hegemon, but I think they play a very important role in manufacturing consent, under the guise of the scientific method ™. I don't doubt the ability to find purity in any research program, but more often than not those that are directly applicable to society (so maybe not the string theory department) can be weaponized to influence public opinion. See how institutions influence the meat/factory farm industry, as an example.

Considering these elements, it isn't suprising that academics who are dissenters against the status quo will likely have their career terminated (at least in the west). Take a look at David Miller in the UK.

Alongside the prestige and allure of many scientific journals, academics also talk of the "publish or perish" mentality. Now, I don't know if this is still a strong sociological phenomena, but everyone I know with a PhD or doing one who want to pursue academia really submit to that belief.

There has also been frequent news of academic fraud, or exposé of academic journals being extremely careless with what they publish.

With all of this in mind (I'm sure I can think of more), the "image" I had of academia has also been shattered. I've always known it is imperfect, but it is not the safe haven it paints itself to be. With that being said, I know many academics who mainly teach and seldom publish and who are great people. Many modern Marxists whose works I enjoy reading on MR also have a position in academia. So it's not all that bad I think.

The illusion was merely broken...

That being said, we all sometime's forget this lil rule..

Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Profit motive for research bad. Being desperate to find positive results so you can get published at all and advance your career bad. Paywalls bad. Liberally motivated research bad. International cooperative enhancing of knowledge base of humanity good. Individual academics generally neutral to good (just the actively evil ones get paid a bunch by the Koch brothers to appear on TV and say shit like "well, the science isn't in yet").

I think broadly, I like individual scientists and the "idea" of academia good, but the system is designed in such a way that you can only really do it as a career if you reify current structures. Even something like "economics" could be good. It's not, but it could be.

But of course I would say that with an academic background. Most of my friends are academics of one sort or another.

Remove the elitism obviously.

Just private companies out to make a profit churning out employees pre trained to generate profit for private interests.

I had that same view until i actually spent a few years in the academic system. That shattered my illusions and left me very cynical about the whole institution. Even in my STEM field academia was just being used as an auxiliary to the private sector with which universities are inextricably intertwined. And more than the structure of the institution itself i was disgusted by the types of people in it. Perhaps this is worse in STEM but the kinds of people i was surrounded by were some of the most unpleasant i have ever interacted with.

Students doing "proper" research don't care about the outcome, they're just doing it to publish something and have it to their name. They think it's required to go on to the next stage for your doctoral, or they think it will command them a higher salary in the industry. That's not how it should be. I'm going to propose an ambitious project and I'm 99% sure will be rejected, because institutions don't have profs who can "guide" people for actually engaging work, even though the "guidance" that they give is utter trash because they literally couldn't care less about the research themselves. Academia feels like a career path where you go to get snug and settle for a smaller salary than the industry but benefit by having job security through publishing pseudoscientific bs every few months.

A sad joke that question-begs liberal bullshit. Anything half-decent is strangled semester by semester until it finally succumbs and something more profitable can take its place. If academia is ever to live, it first must die.

For the most part, academia exposes a lot of the bullshit going on. However, liberal ideology prevents researchers from seeing "the elephant" i.e. the horrors of capitalism, so they go searching for answers down blind alleys. For example, in my field, research has established the brutality of our healthcare system; but, research will always seek to answer this by recommending and then further exploring "novel healthcare solutions" instead of, ya know, the solution that's right in our face (FUCKING DESTROY OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM)

Hopeless in short until a revo changes the baseline of society. They're very much an arm of capital and reflect all its goals for better or worse. I've found many of the critiques of academia , its classist gatekeeping, and its epistemology made in Homoacademicus still hold for academia at large, its one part very bourgeois but another part still harkening back to feudal guilds and if you're not deemed an acceptable apprentice, or if your particular branch can't play funding politics, well you're out before it truly begins.

I've found as I've gotten older STEAM academia is a lot less material bound than one would expect, just due to the nature of economics which drives it shape or form shape policy and research and also what's an acceptable approach to novel problems so instead of dealing with the root cause of something its assumed better to look at shorter term sketchy patches.

Going to xth journals being really lazy with what they publish and who is considered an expert, almost ended up being an unknowing 'expert' myself back at the start of covid19 since a college acquaintance hit me up assuming I was in the field with a PhD she wanted for some broad overview style paper on it. Nah, too poor, and if I came into money I would always be found a poor fit because I have mannerisms of the lower class, along with the whole being trans gender and then racial minority thing, I've found most academics are reflective of the society they're in so many of them are huge bigots, though generally they like to pretend to hide it.

I got my degree in maths so there was little possibility for propaganda or manipulation in any of the courses, but that went along with a gaping hole where the funding was supposed to be. For the first few years of my degree, we attended some lectures in a building that was already torn down on paper and hadn't been renovated in a century; it had water leaking in through the ceiling in three places, one window could not be closed due to a tree growing through it, and the heating had to be turned up to 11 to prevent mould. We finally ended up getting a shiny new building thanks to a local donor who was a maths enthusiast

Shit floats to the top. If the data doesn't support a capitalist system the information is suppressed and ridiculed. So you'll get wildly inaccurate world views the higher up in academia you get.